"Imperialism" and "The Tracks of Our Forefathers" eBook

These were not particularly pleasant thoughts.
There was nothing mawkish about Jack MacRae.
He had never been taught to shrink from the inescapable
facts of existence. Even if he had, the war would
have cured him of that weakness. As it was, twelve
months in the infantry, nearly three years in the
air, had taught him that death is a commonplace after
a man sees about so much of it, that it is many times
a welcome relief from suffering either of the body
or the spirit. He chose to believe that it had
proved so to his father. So his feelings were
not that strange mixture of grief and protest which
seizes upon those to whom death is the ultimate tragedy,
the irrevocable disaster, when it falls upon some
one near and dear.

No, Jack MacRae, brooding by his fire, was lonely
and saddened and heavy-hearted. But beneath these
neutral phases there was slowly gathering a flood
of feeling unrelated to his father’s death, more
directly based indeed upon Donald MacRae’s life,
upon matters but now revealed to him, which had their
root in that misty period when his father was a young
man like himself.

On the table beside him lay an inch-thick pile of
note paper all closely written upon in the clear,
small pen-script of his father.

My son: [MacRae had written]
I have a feeling lately that I may never see
you again. Not that I fear you will be killed.
I no longer have that fear. I seem to have
an unaccountable assurance that having come
through so much you will go on safely to the end.
But I’m not so sure about myself. I’m
aging too fast. I’ve been told my
heart is bad. And I’ve lost heart lately.
Things have gone against me. There is nothing
new in that. For thirty years I’ve
been losing out to a greater or less extent in most
of the things I undertook—­that is,
the important things.

Perhaps I didn’t
bring the energy and feverish ambition I might
have to my undertakings.
Until you began to grow up I accepted
things more or
less passively as I found them.

Until you have a son of your own,
until you observe closely other men and their
sons, my boy, you will scarcely realize how close
we two have been to each other. We’ve been
what they call good chums. I’ve taken
a secret pride in seeing you grow and develop
into a man. And while I tried to give you an
education—­broken into, alas, by this
unending war—­such as would enable
you to hold your own in a world which deals harshly
with the ignorant, the incompetent, the untrained,
it was also my hope to pass on to you something
of material value.

This land which runs across Squitty
Island from the Cove to Cradle Bay and extending
a mile back—­in all a trifle over six hundred
acres—­was to be your inheritance. You
were born here. I know that no other place
means quite so much to you as this old log house
with the meadow behind it, and the woods, and the sea
grumbling always at our doorstep. Long ago